


Astringent

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle At Hogwarts aftermath, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Poetry, Real World References, more CS oriented than plot-oriented
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 18:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17330054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Neville and Ginny cherish their friendship, especially now.





	Astringent

**Author's Note:**

> My bestie loved the HP fics about the Marauders that I wrote for her, so I figured I would transfer my fics about them over to this here page. Obviously this one isn't about them, but Neville is my favorite character apart from Moony, Padfoot and Prongs.
> 
> Thank you for reading.

Mending remnants of confidence tested his compassion, stretched out its boundaries past intangible horizons, the ferocity of their sunsets scorching the channels pumping through his heart. Yet he went about it with a stoicism learned from years of reading, observing, pondering over the stories told to him by friends who lived during wartime and lived still, memories eroding their bodies into gaunt, sunken wraiths.

 

In the nights since the Battle’s end, Neville had forgotten how one might ever savor the luxury of dreaming, ruminating over any given day’s minutiae, expanding on unfulfilled promises. On the rare occasions his subconscious misbehaved, desiccated remains haunted the charred annals of his nightmares.

 

Doused in sweat, he woke from one such phantasmagoria of fear, kneading breadcrumbs of sleep from his cheekbones. Moonlight, cast in ghoulish underwater etchings, dove through the open window, cascading across his legs in an enchanting seascape.

 

“Help me.”

 

Here he was, drowning again, submerging himself in the breathtaking sorrow of a woe no longer shared.

 

Inches behind the dark bedcurtains, a voice said, “I’m here, Nev.”

 

Breaking, the waves eased into calming tides at the back of his head.

“Thank Merlin you can’t sleep either,” he smiled.

 

Harrumphing, Ginny tossed a rough hand-knit pillow at his head, the color indistinguishable in the underwater gloom. Climbing over him, cradling her head in his lap, she curled her body inwards in the manner of a slumbering tabby.

 

She said, something scratching her throat, “We need to remember we’re human.”

 

It was easier to brainwash yourself, consider the possibility that the Reaper himself chose you to fulfill his tireless cause. Neville envisioned him as someone apart from Voldemort, impossibly older or perhaps confined to one age in the way of Polidori’s Vampyre. The Reaper’s inheritance of his grim livelihood had not been by choice; this much Neville ascertained. This belief alone had drugged him through the grueling drudgery of dueling, amorphous pustules of Death Eaters charring the blurring fringes of his vision.

 

“Who’s this stranger, Gin?”

 

He clawed at his haggard forehead, scraped his nails through a rough nest of hair. On her knees, Ginny seized his wrist.

 

“Someone more important than all the fucking whimsy you might’ve conjured from our dead’s hearts.”

Joy, of the unquestioned variety, the euphoric bliss you might lose your life to in the act of pursuing, had suffused her dead brother’s playful gestures.

 

Before he surrendered to another crying jag, Neville breathed, out through the nose and in through the mouth.

 

Tugging at Ginny’s fingertips, he found them unbearably chilled.

 

“Want to hear a new poem?” he said, rubbing her hand between his palms.

 

Scowling, she sat up on her elbow, worrying her free hand down the runs of her stockings.

 

“I’m offended by your assumption that I don’t.”

 

He smirked out a laugh. “Bollocks.”

 

Closing his eyes, he cracked his scabbed knuckles. Beginning as he did nearly all of his recitations, he imagined himself in a silent cathedral, a thunderous reverence diving in around him in dust-flown light:

 

_I am a pantomime of the Victorian convalescent._

_Shrouded in the undergarments of the opium-addicted dead._

_I no longer sleep._

_My friend, in the night, disembowels_

_Faerie tales hailing from his homeland._

_Yeats, a tyrant, beloved by all,_

_Supported fascism, adored Mussolini._

_It’s important to remember, my friend reminds me, that Yeats invented the concept_

_Of the changeling for the modern audience._

_Though the concept existed long before_

_Any tyrant crucified their legacy._

_I do not brook the argument._

_He inquires as to when I might recover._

_When, if ever, might one recover from the death of a self that never was?_

 

Ponderous silence descended over the bedroom. That Ginny considered his work worthy of sincere contemplation encouraged Neville to act on his burgeoning wish. Were he to write the stuff for a living, it might keep his gran and himself in their home that much longer.

 

“My da’s sent you more of his books of Muggle poetry,” Ginny said.

 

His surprise at her bluntness was short-lived.

 

“From the Great War specifically, yeah.”

 

Embracing him, she rubbed her tears against his sagging shoulders. He strengthened his grip around her.

 

“It’s lacking cohesion,” she said, “but you’re fucking on your way somewhere.”

 

With an irrational violence, all at once, he longed to shelve his work in the archive of their friendship until it rotted into age-spotted pulp.

 

“How’s Harry?” he said.

 

There. A topic that held an equal amount of weight between the both of them.

 

“We’re not touching that with a ten foot fucking bludger.”

 

Releasing her steadfast grip around his shoulders, she sat back on her heels, drawing her pleated black skirt over her stockings. He sighed.

 

Examining her wiggling toes, Ginny said, “Luna’s in love with you, Nev.”

 

He’d gone about keeping their sacred secret for the length of time a monk inlaid a Bible in the cloister of a scriptorium. (Bloody Hell, for all he knew, Arthur Weasley _had_ supplied him with a veritable library of Muggle texts).

 

The way he’d gone about reciprocating her affection, Merlin’s Beard, what he wouldn’t give to rearrange the evil machinations of clockwork so as not to endure the incomprehension, then rage, and finally disappointment curdled around her mouth.

 

_How can I become worthy of someone with your intelligence? I am armed with the written word, a morbidly encyclopedic knowledge of herbology and, evidently, a kind heart. Your bravery, honesty, wit, and compassion testify to a mightier test than I can hope to pass. That I am ardent in my longing to care for you long past our languishing in these ruinous walls must throw a twist into your dreams like Something Awful. Forgive me, Luna, for I cannot come close to forgiving myself. Seek out your dreams. Watch them fly._

 

_Your Neville_

 

Rather than owling him, Luna had stunned him in the Gryffindor Common Room (thankfully long after everyone had retired to something resembling sleep), mapping the whirlwind he’d cast her through in the wakeful spell of her eyes before kissing him.

 

“We’re far too much in love to focus on much else at the moment.”

 

It might have irked him early on, Ginny’s need to learn of his romantic entanglement rather than dwell on her own arrangement, but now he saw it for what it was: a happy diversion from the numbing, bleak mundanity.

 

“Your da’s a remarkable man,” he said. Leaning her back against his chest, he wove a lazy braid through her hair. “All this shit’s going on and he has the patience and fortitude to send me poetry. I love him like my own da.”

 

“Didn’t your da write his own?”

 

They lapsed into a heavy silence.

“He did.”

 

A bitter taint spilled through his mouth, astringent and matured. He’d grown apart from them, evolved, in Luna’s words, into an ever-aching heart capable of its own evolution. They wouldn’t recognize him now. His gran knew him better. Luna knew him better than anyone, apart from his best friend.

 

“Sorry,” Ginny said.

 

He held her round the shoulders. “It’s all right, dear heart.”

 

They attempted to nap, foreheads brushing, moonlight blanketing soft breathing.

 

Hours had bled into their own eternity before Ginny said, “Think Seamus minds you writing about his hatred of nationalism?”

 

“Not _all_ nationalism. Nah, I don’t think he’d care. He wants everyone to know he hates Yeats.”

 

They heard a calamitous roar, and then a stage-whisper of admonishment, most likely Dean.

 

Laughing themselves silly, they sank, quietly led along the rushing current of a shared dream.


End file.
